Church Reformed

By Tim Bayly

When God calls us out of our sin and to Himself through the Gospel, He adopts us into His family. That family is the Church. This is a book about what that family should be, what it should do, and why it matters.

When we look carefully at the big things of the Bible, it’s important for us to examine both the Scriptures and the cultur

• Language: English
• Publisher: Warhorn Media
• Release date: Jul 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9781940017228

Tim Bayly

Tim Bayly has been married to his wife, Mary Lee, for more than forty years. They have five children and twenty-nine grandchildren (for now). Since 1996, Tim has served as senior pastor of Trinity Reformed Church in Bloomington, Indiana. He is the author of Daddy Tried and Church Reformed, and co-author of Elders Reformed and The Grace of Shame.

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To Mary Lee

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Part 1 • First Things

1. Who Is the Church?

2. Baptism: How We Enter the Church

Part 2 • What Does the Church Do?

3. The Teaching of the Apostles

4. Fellowship

5. The Breaking of Bread

6. Prayer

Part 3 • Threats Faced by the Church

7. Naiveté

8. Hypocrisy

9. Gathering Goats

Conclusion • Heaven on Earth

Appendix

Recommended Reading

Thank You to Our Patrons!

Publication Info

Foreword

Tim and I had a professor in seminary who urged his students not to write a book before we were forty. I took his meaning to be that a book written too soon would be written out of pride, untested theories, and ivory-tower notions. Don’t try to teach someone to walk before you’ve learned how to walk with a limp. Books about the church written before forty would be without the seasoning and maturity that come from hours in living rooms, in garages, in counseling sessions, in funeral homes, in long elders meetings, in the trenches.

Tim passed forty years a good while ago (sorry to remind you, old friend). He is now into his fourth decade of pastoral ministry. During the first decade, Tim and I pastored an hour and a half from each other in the same denomination. About once a month we packed up our families after morning worship and took turns spending our Mondays in each other’s homes. The conversations always turned to our churches, to the needs of the sheep, the personal crises, the challenging pastoral situations. There was never an end to the needs and opportunities to seek and give counsel. Iron sharpened iron.

While changes in churches added distance, the phone calls and emails hardly slowed down. Over the years I watched Tim grow sharper in mind and softer in heart, stronger in biblical conviction and clearer in counsel. In a word: wise.

Tim’s wisdom and experience is applicable across the Church today because his wisdom and experience have been gained from across the Church. He has served in rural churches, small-town churches (you can’t get much more small town than Pardeeville, Wisconsin—trust me, I’ve been there), and university-town churches. He has spent as much time in barns and fields as he has in coffee shops and well-appointed offices.

Of the writing of many books there is no end, and this certainly applies to books on the Church. They tell us church should be simple, deliberate, visioneering, counter-cultural, emerging, purpose-driven, attractional. Books wring their hands over why people don’t go to church or are leaving the church.

The solutions they offer are superficial, often pragmatic and consumeristic, designed to entertain and meet the felt needs of the goats rather than lead and spiritually nurture the sheep. Too many books are written by hirelings rather than by real shepherds.

This book is different. The messenger is different and the message is different.

This book is written in the spirit of the apostles. In the spirit of Peter exhorting elders to shepherd the flock of God, exercising oversight, willingly as God would have you (1 Peter 5:2). In the spirit of Paul who pleaded with the Ephesian overseers to shepherd and defend the flock from fierce wolves attacking the church from inside and out, drawing the sheep away. In the spirit of the senior apostle, John, loving and exhorting and warning so the church may keep herself from idols and not sin.

Tim takes to heart the warning of Hebrews 13:17, that leaders will give an account for the souls under their care.

He loves the Church with a fatherly love, with tenderness and firmness, with grace and truth in generous doses, with warnings, admonition, and wisdom. And when his words cut, it’s the wound of a friend. If you don’t want your conscience pricked, then don’t read this book.

But if you walk away, just know there are precious few voices in the Church today willing to say what Tim has to say. He is a much needed gift to the body of Christ, a necessary gift. When have you heard writers of books on the Church today say, He who will not have the church as his mother, cannot have God as his Father?

This is the work of a true father of the faith who has loved his flock as his own children, and they know it. There is no theory here, no untested hypotheses. This is wisdom gained from living it out. This is iron sharpening iron.

Tim loves the Church. How do I know?

Well, first of all, I have worshiped in all the churches Tim has served. I can testify to the love shared between the flocks and their shepherd. I have seen the fellowship, the intimacy, the love and care for one another. I have been a bit jealous of the genuine sense of community.

Second, I have seen Tim confront sin. And is that not the greatest sign of love? Is that not like the love of God toward us, that He disciplines those He loves and chastens us as sons?

Third, because Tim has given his life’s energy to defending pure doctrine and the purity of Christ’s body. This has cost him in so many ways, yet he has been unwavering for truth and for purity.

Peter tells husbands to live with their wives in an understanding way. This book is about living with, and in, the Bride of Christ in an understanding way. In a way that will lead her to become more holy, cleansed with the washing of water with the word.

Of course any book on the church worth its salt is going to address the seminal and foundational text on the church, Acts 2:42. But hold on to your hat, because Tim is not going to say all the usual things many say about it that lack understanding.

He urges us to recommit ourselves to be devoted to the apostles’ teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer. This is a call to return to real intimacy, real authority, real love.

This is a book about heaven on earth, to borrow the title of the last chapter. What grace and blessing that God should call us out of the world and give this precious gift, a foretaste and glimpse of heaven here on earth. We are to love what He loves and honor what He honors. Our labor for her is not in vain.

Do you love the church? Do you love the Bride of Christ? Do you love the Body as much as you love the Head? Do you love the sheep? What is the proof, the evidence?

Satan has been assailing Christ’s Church from the very beginning, and his relentless assault will never cease until Christ returns. So into the midst of this battle, Christ’s faithful followers must be equipped. This is a book about helping us love the precious, blood-bought body of our Lord Jesus Christ the way He does.

A young pastor reading this book will be helped to start on the right course and avoid many pitfalls in ministry.

The older pastor reading this book will be helped to see the way toward finishing well.

For all the called-out ones in the pew, this book is a wonderful sword, making one fit to wage war with boldness and courage in this postmodern world that hates authority and truth.

Someone told Augustine to take up and read. I say, take up and drink. This book is a hearty red wine, well-aged with wisdom, filled with the aroma of Christ.

Soli Deo Gloria.

Robert Woodyard

Senior Pastor

First Christian Reformed Church

Lynden, Washington

Acknowledgments

First, my dear Mary Lee: she has listened to this book many times over the course of a decade, giving helpful feedback and providing significant editing—a delightful first for us.

Second, my eldest son Joseph: for his careful thinking and wise counsel.

Third, my brother David: he did a thorough edit, saving me from many mistakes.

Fourth, Pastors Stephen Baker, David Curell, Jody Killingsworth, Alex McNeilly, Jacob Mentzel, Phillip Moyer, and Lucas Weeks: as I worked, they patiently listened and gave encouragement.

Fifth, the session of Trinity Reformed Church: finally, they told me to get the book done, Or Else. Not wanting Else, I got it done.

Sixth, Andrew Dionne: he provided critical help in the chapter on prayer.

Last, Nathan Alberson, Jacob Mentzel, and Alex McNeilly: in the end, the brunt of the work getting this text into useful form fell on them. No author has better editors.

—Acts 20:28

Part 1

First

Things

Around my hometown of Bloomington, Indiana, you’ll occasionally see a bumper sticker with a picture of a steepled church and the words Love Your Mother.

The bumper sticker was inspired by a conference on the Church¹ we held several years ago. A young mother in our congregation designed it.

Christians love the Church. Paul writes in Ephesians that the Church is the Bride of Christ. Jesus loves the Church and gave Himself up for her. What He loves we must love. How could it be otherwise for those redeemed by His blood?

But sadly, today it is otherwise among many who claim to love Jesus.

Recently I visited a man who is dying. A lifelong student of Scripture, he knows the Bible inside out, yet he has forsaken the assembly of believers. Each Lord’s Day he sits at home while his wife joins God’s people in worship. This wasn’t the first time I visited a man close to death who knows God’s Word but refuses to worship with the people of God in a local church. Another man I knew dropped his wife off for worship each Sunday yet refused to enter himself.

How can a man love Jesus and not love His Bride?

Jesus commands us to love one another, yet how are we to understand one another if we repudiate and condemn our fellow Christians? How can we obey if we will not join ourselves to Christ’s Church?

Of course we all admit the difficulty of loving the Church. Isn’t that the point?

When I was young, my mother had an annoying habit of spitting on her Kleenex to clean food off my face.

Sometimes it’s hard to love your mother, yet God commands us to honor our father and mother. What honor does a mother deserve more than love? She carried us in her womb for nine months. She bathed, nursed, clothed, loved, kissed, taught, and disciplined us. What love!

So it is with the Church. She cares for God’s children in the same ways our earthly mothers care for us. Scripture names her mother² and we are to love her.

But sadly, during the second half of the twentieth century, Western Christians left their Mother behind.

Leaving the Church Behind

In October 1985 my father began his twenty-fifth (and final) year as a columnist for a periodical for evangelicals called Eternity. His column that month was titled The End of an Era and summarized what his generation of evangelical leaders had received as a legacy and what they were leaving to their children.

Here are a few excerpts:

We inherited three or four small independent seminaries; we bequeath nine or ten healthy institutions that are the major source of trained evangelical leadership for America’s churches and parachurch movements.

We inherited one national youth movement—Christian Endeavor, working through the local church. . . . Parachurch youth organizations we founded include Youth for Christ, Young Life, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, and Campus Crusade for Christ.

. . . we inherited denominational, church-centered programs for children, youth, and adults. We bequeath Child Evangelism Fellowship, Christian Service Brigade, Pioneer Ministries, Christian Business Men’s Committee, Bible Study Fellowship, Neighborhood Bible Studies, Christian Medical Society, Christian Legal Society, Nurses’ Christian Fellowship, and many other parachurch programs. . . .

We inherited Christians who were loyal to the church. . . . We bequeath Christians who are loyal to many religious organizations in addition to—sometimes in preference to—their church . . .³

Through much of the twentieth century, evangelical Protestantism was the dominant religious force in North America. But, as my father noted, evangelicals did not commit their lives to building the Church. Rather, they poured their talents into founding parachurch missions, colleges, seminaries, youth ministries, camps, evangelistic crusades, radio stations, publishers, professional associations, and campus ministries.

Evangelicalism’s best and brightest did their work outside the church, and though they assumed this work fulfilled the Great Commission, no one stopped to ask why the church no longer mattered.

One of the legacies Evangelicalism has bequeathed to Christians today is a growing separation between becoming a Christian and becoming a member of the Church of Jesus Christ. Our evangelism has called men and women to trust God for the forgiveness of their sins and establish a personal relationship with Jesus. Then we encourage new believers to find a way to continue to grow.

Somehow, though, the Church is